July 6th - August 28th 2007
Blind Spot - Diana Copperwhite
Limerick City Gallery of Art is very pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Dublin based, Limerick born artist, Diana Copperwhite. Copperwhite was recently awarded the prestigious AIB artist’s award for an exhibition she is preparing for the West Cork Arts Centre. BLIND SPOT at Limerick City Gallery of Art is both her first museum show and also her first major exhibition in Limerick.
“Incorporating many levels of awareness from a philosophical critique of narratives of historical nostalgia to the visual fundamentals of a colour card, Copperwhite stridently delves into a subjectivity that art has wrestled with for centuries, by one name or another. Common to all these aspects is a fascinating intuitive scheme, constantly driven forward by her commitment to the medium of paint.” Niamh Ann Kelly
As a highly competent practitioner familiar with current European painting traditions, Diana Copperwhite combines both a lyrical and soft use of colour in her process of painting, which both portrays and obliterates the subject through manipulating layers of pigment. Copperwhite’s painterly explorations of palettes of colours and light, in oils, pencil drawings and watercolours portray heightened realities in a turned up pastel world that owes as much to the feeling of contemporary digital printing qualities as to the history of painting.
Diana Copperwhite is an artist whose work is concerned primarily with memory. Her subjects are identifiable, sometimes drawing on media images and at other times from her own experiences, but she plays with lighting and colour to create a slightly unreal dreamlike quality. The mood of her paintings is generally lyrical and soft with liquid layered surfaces that create an air of ambiguity. She paints over recognisable images, working and reworking the surface so that objects take on the fluid quality of being remembered rather than frozen in real time.
EVENTS
The exhibition will be opened by Rachael Thomas, Senior Curator: Head of Exhibitions, IMMA on Thursday July 5th at 6.00pm. Diana Copperwhite in conversation with Pippa Little on Saturday 14th July at 1pm.
BLIND SPOT is in association with the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery. The exhibition is accompanied by a brochure featuring an essay by Niamh Ann Kelly.
Biographical Notes
Diana Copperwhite was born in Limerick and lives and works in Dublin. She studied at Limerick School of Art and Design, the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, and Winchester School of Art and Design, Barcelona. She is the 2007 recipient of the AIB Art Award. Recent exhibitions include In a certain light, Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin, June 2006, Midnight, Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, 2005, and Galleri Kakelhallen, Aland, Finland, 2001.
For further information please contact artgallery@limerickcity.ie
